Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/92

 them easily portable, and their cheapness offered a further inducement. Ibn Batuta, describing how porcelain—so-called—was sent from China to India, and how it passed from country to country until it reached Morocco, says that in China it commanded about the same price as earthenware in Arabia. Much valuable information about the export trade from China in the thirteenth century is given by Chao Jukua, an author to whose works Dr. Hirth has been the first to call attention. He held the post of inspector of foreign trade and shipping in the maritime province of Fuhkien, about the year 1220, and in that capacity he compiled a work called "Annals of the various Districts (chu-fan-chih), which was happily embodied in the encyclopedia of the Ming Emperor Yung-lo (1403-1425), and thus preserved to later generations. In the days of this author, the city of Ch'üan-chou-fu in Fuhkien was the principal mart of China's foreign commerce. Thence the products of the Kingdom were exported to Borneo, to Cochin-China, to Java, to Sumatra, to Malabar, to Zanzibar, to Persia, to Japan, to Mecca, to Ceylon, to India, and to various other places. The nearest market was Borneo. Junks from Ch'üan-chou-fu proceeded direct to Bruni, on the north-west coast of that island, then a city of more than ten thousand inhabitants, its ruler attended by a numerous suite, and its safety guaranteed by soldiers wearing copper armour, with a fleet of over a hundred vessels. The arrival of a foreign ship was an occasion of much ceremony at Bruni. The king visited the ship, reaching it by a gangway covered with silk brocade, and an interchange of costly civilities took place during about a month before the question of trade